Her mother was a pianist and piano teacher and her father was an organist and a professor of music.
She attended a small private school where the constant nature walks and discussions about paintings meant that the teacher never lost her interest.
When she was eleven the family moved north where her father was Blackburn Cathedral's organist.
The previous Principal was Eglantyne Mary Jebb[2] Brearley brought to a role a very wide range of experience.
[4] The college's ideas were contained in, Fundamentals in the First School, which was a book where Brearley chaired the authors and then she and Raymond Bott edited and published in 1969.
[1] Molly Brearley and Dame Joyce Bishop obtained funding from the Leverhulme Foundation to create a one year study of Project for the Study of Educational Failure in Underprivileged Children in 1971 to 1972.
[1] They persuaded Froebel lecturer Chris Athey to lead the nursery and the work which ran until 1978.